Naturally Betty kissed him for this speech, as they were at breakfast alone together, the servants banished.
"Well, anyway, we won't give him the letters," she said when she had gone back to her own place—not far away.
"Won't we?" asked Jim, with a thoughtful air.
"No, certainly not," returned Betty. "I like your country-women, and I won't deliberately let Loveland loose to prey upon them."
"I 'guess' they can take care of themselves," said Jim, putting on his Yankiest accent.
"I don't know. Some of them might fall in love with him," suggested Betty doubtfully. "He's awfully good-looking, with a kind of winning, boyish way, and—a voice that's far too nice to express him, really. One often feels too lenient with Val, as if he were one of one's own pet weaknesses come alive and walking about."
"As for his looks, he's more like you than your own brother is," said Jim, "eyes, dimples, curly hair and all; so you wouldn't want me to hate him, would you? And as for his voice, it's occurred to me that maybe it expresses something in his real self—the hidden self that he and nobody else knows anything about—the self he's never had a chance to develop or find out, because his mother and other people have spoiled him from his babyhood."
"That's very subtle of you, Jim, as well as very kind—and like you," said Betty. "I wish I could think it's true, as he's my cousin. But thank goodness, I for one never spoiled him. I scratched his face once when I was a small girl, and I'm glad. I wish it had left a mark."
"It would have been even a more honourable scar than the one South Africa gave him. But I admit, he is rather an unlicked cub,—at present. I pity the girl who falls in love with him—as he now is."
"Always was and probably ever will be, Loveland without end," finished Betty, flippantly. "The cheek of him, expecting me to ask you for letters, so that he can go over to your country and do his best to make some nice American girl miserable for life—and spend all her money. I shall punish him—since I can't do anything worse—by telling him exactly what I think of him."